


Teenagers are Not as Subtle as They Think

by Truth



Category: Natsume Yuujinchou | Natsume's Book of Friends
Genre: Family, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-12-21
Updated: 2018-12-21
Packaged: 2019-09-23 22:50:21
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,075
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17089238
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Truth/pseuds/Truth
Summary: The first time someone asked her if she had children, she’d paused, taken by surprise.  Of course not.  Not yet.  It took time, didn’t it?  She stopped noticing the question after a while.  “No, not yet,” she’d respond, with a small smile of anticipation.





	Teenagers are Not as Subtle as They Think

**Author's Note:**

  * For [mugen](https://archiveofourown.org/users/mugen/gifts).



Fujiwara Touko loved her house. Shigeru had brought her to it before they were married, showed her every inch of the gleaming wooden floors, and every corner of the closets. There was room for a garden, and the kitchen was everything she’d always wanted.

“It’s a lovely house, but isn’t it a big large?” She’d hated the words, even as they fell from her mouth. The house was perfect, really. She couldn’t possibly love it more.

Shigeru laughed at her, putting his arms around her and tugging her backward into his arms. Resting his chin on her shoulder he said, “Do you think it would be a better size if there were three of us?”

“Oh!” Touko blushed, hands flying up in an attempt to cover her shyness, but she could feel the smile spreading across her face. “For three - for three it would be perfect.”

Touko grew to love their house. She loved the beautiful garden that they built together. She loved her kitchen, where she learned, experimented, cooked, served, and learned some more. She loved the beautiful wooden floors and joints. Shigeru allowed her to choose everything from the linens to the bits and pieces in the kitchen, to what they stored in the closets.

“This is our home, but I want it to be exactly as you want it,” he said. “I can only love it more with your touch visible at every turn.”

Still - it always felt a little… big.

The first time someone asked her if she had children, she’d paused, taken by surprise. Of course not. Not yet. It took time, didn’t it? She stopped noticing the question after a while. “No, not yet,” she’d respond, with a small smile of anticipation.

They were happy. Touko kept house and looked after Shigeru, and Shigeru looked after her in turn. They loved each other, and their house. Shigeru enjoyed his job, and they spent every moment they could together. Touko had never been much of a one for extravagance. When some of her former classmates wrote her letters detailing their exciting overseas trips, she would respond with how much fun she’d had at the latest festival, and never felt that her life was lacking in excitement and happiness.

One day, someone asked, “Do you have children?”

Touko opened her mouth to answer ‘No, not yet’ - and stopped, mouth half open. She mumbled something, made an excuse, and almost ran all the way home.

Not yet. Not yet. Then… then when? She and Shigeru had been married for five years. Surely - surely if they were going to have a child, it would have happened by now? She let herself into their beautiful house and sat down with a thump in the genkan. They hadn’t been trying to have a child, but they hadn’t been trying not to, either.

They loved each other so much, had simply taken it for granted that there would be a third member of their family, that it hadn’t occurred to her it might not be a possibility.

When Shigeru came home, he found her still sitting there, shoes on her feet, purse clutched in her hands. “Touko? Did you just get home?”

She looked up at him, dry-eyed, and shook her head. “Shigeru, will we ever be a family? Or will it always be just… us?”

After a long moment he seated himself beside her. One of his large hands closed over hers where it rested against her purse. “I don’t know. I thought… maybe it would just take time.”

Touko shook her head, turning her hand in his to slip her fingers between his. “I just, I didn’t notice how much time had gone by. I - I’m not upset. Not really. Not yet? But -”

“I know.” They sat for a little while, holding hands and leaning against each other.

“We’ll give it more time,” Touko decided. 

Time passed, and she considered seeing a doctor. She didn’t. She wanted a child, a third to balance their marriage, make it a family. But there was still no urgency to it. 

“I feel like we’re waiting for something,” she told Shigeru one evening as they sat together, watching the laundry blow gently in the evening breeze. 

“We are.”

As the years passed, they remained happy together. Their love grew and there was no joy greater than that which they found in each other.

Still, Touko found herself thinking more and more of their house as their house, and not at all as a home. She was still waiting, and while she wasn’t dissatisfied with her life, there was a hole there. Not a gaping, painful emptiness, just a hollow where something should fit.

People stopped asking about children, and she was grateful for it.

Eventually, they decided together that perhaps they simply weren’t meant to have a child of their own.

“Adoption is an option,” Shigeru suggested one day. “But we’re not as young as we used to be.”

Touko considered it. “It needn’t be a baby, after all. There must be a child who needs a home.”

Adoption was not a terribly common practice, particularly as they were no longer in the first blush of their youth, but it was worth considering.

“We could start close to home. Our extended families are large, Touko. We can get in touch with someone, see if there are any children in need of a family.” 

She smiled, “It would be nice, to find a child who needed us as much as we need them.”

The tragedy that had befallen Natsume Takashi touched Touko’s heart. A small boy who tragically lost his parents, and his brief stay in what passed for a modern orphanage - that was bad enough. Being bounced from family to family with reports ranging from ‘juvenile delinquent’ to ‘pathological liar’ to ‘something is just wrong with that boy’ - it nearly broke her heart.

“He’s been to so many different schools.” Shigeru leafed slowly through the information the family at large had been willing to part with. “So many different families.”

“Do you think we could help him?”

Shigeru looked over the top of his glasses at her, solemn expression fading into a fond smile. “I’m sure we could.” The smile faded. “I doubt very much we could do worse than what he’s already been through.”

“Would he be happy here?”

“I think so.” Shigeru closed the folder. “I’ll start making inquiries.”

Days passed, and then weeks. Unlike those first few years, when Touko had been willing to wait, there was a sudden urgency to her mood. She had a name and a handful of photographs that showed a sad-faced little boy who seemed to be aging far too quickly. It wasn’t enough.

She wasn’t sure what fancy took her one morning, abandoning her dinner plans and snatching her purse and shoes. The train ride wasn’t a long one and, before she knew it, she was staring up at a school she’d never seen before.

This was the right place. This was the right time. She knew it.

Walking slowly through the neighborhood that Takashi currently called home did not help with her restlessness and then -

“I suppose I would say it was fate, if I believed in such things.” Touko rolled a small dumpling across the kitchen counter, watching with a fond smile as Takashi’s strange cat snatched it out of the air. “I just knew he was our son. I have no idea what possessed me to accost the poor boy in the middle of the street.”

The round cat with the disproportionate head rolled around on the floor, growling enthusiastically through his mouthful of dumpling.

“Maybe it was the look on his face. He looked so tired, so resigned. No boy of his age should be burdened with such things. Not that having a strange woman accost him in the most deranged manner possible made matters better, I suppose.”

“Grrrmmrrl!”

“I shouldn’t be feeding you dumplings,” she told him sternly, though she couldn’t repress a smile as she rolled another one off the edge of the counter. “But you won’t tell anyone, so I suppose my secret’s safe.”

The smile became sad around the edges. “His life is still pretty hard, isn’t it? I wish he could feel settled enough to confide in us, but ….”

Takashi smiled, now. Not the facade that he’d shown them so often since agreeing to come to their home - and it had become a home. The thought made her smile brighten again. “He smiles. He laughs - he has friends. I don’t think he’s ever had friends before.”

A bit of fish slid across the counter this time, hanging temptingly on the edge, and she watched Takashi’s cat brace himself on the floor, wiggling his hindquarters as he prepared to leap at the treat.

“You’re the first thing he ever asked us for, kitty cat. He asked us to let him keep you. Did you know that?”

Apparently he did not, because his rump plopped down on the floor, and his attention went from the fish to her. It was not the first time the cat had been distracted by something she’d told him. They had quite a few of these afternoon sessions, where she talked to him while she made dinner, and he entertained her by chasing bits and pieces around the kitchen.

“He never asked for anything. It was so hard to see him, with only a small bag of clothes and few odds and ends, just… accepting that it was all he would ever have.” Touko sighed and went back to actually preparing for dinner. “He has changed so much just in the past year.”

A heavy thud indicated that she’d lost the cat’s attention, and he’d gone back for the fish. She smiled a little, ‘accidentally’ dropping a piece on the floor. 

“Do you think,” as she finished preparing the fish and set her knife down, “that Shigeru is right? That Takashi takes after his grandmother?”

Silence reigned, and the piece of fish remained beside her foot - untouched.

“Do you think he’ll ever tell us what causes the nightmares? What sends him out of the house at all hours? Where the strange noises come from?” Or, more importantly, the cause of his frequent illnesses and injuries.

She turned, unsurprised to find the cat sitting just behind her, watching her narrowly.

“Do you think he’ll ever tell us what sort of creature you actually are?” Touko nudged the piece of fish with one slippered toe. “Because I’ve never, ever seen a drunk cat before he brought you home.”

The cat remained focused on her, stub of a tail twitching back and forth. She folded her arms and stared back.

“Takashi is my son,” and she couldn’t help the soft smile that spread across her face. “He has made our house a home, and we would never allow that to be taken from him. Isn’t it the duty of every mother to make her child’s life the best it can be?”

The tail’s rapid movement began to slow.

“Or I could be imagining things.” She could see the cat starting to relax. “But we both know that I’m not.” Touko sank to her heels, reaching out to gently scratch between the oddly shaped ears. “Take care of him, kitty cat. Someone has to.”

After a tense moment, the cat rubbed his head against her fingers and leaned forward to pick up the piece of fish. After a bit of thoughtful chewing -

“I’ll talk to him.”

The cat trotted away, leaving her staring wide-eyed after him.

All the observation and hypothesizing in the world never really prepares you for having your worldview shaken. It took her several minutes to rise to her feet, still staring after the cat.

“Well, at least one person in this household knows what sort of trouble he gets into.” With a sigh, she turned back to dinner. There’d be extra fish for a certain cat - and more again if he convinced Takashi to finally open up and tell them what was troubling him. To allow them to take his burdens on as their own, as parents should.

Finally.

She smiled at the pans on the stove, feeling tears prick at the corner of her eyes.

No matter what Takashi was hiding, no matter what trouble was following him, they would be a part of it. 

Family.

Well, family and whatever the 'cat' turned out to be.


End file.
